Description of Project: The Global Awareness assignment required us to work with a partner or group. We were to think of a way to increase our student's global awareness or give them an experience that involved students from another country or culture. My partner and I both teach lower elementary (Kindergarten and First Grade) so we chose an activity that would be age appropriate and hopefully meaningful as well. Involving technology gave us a wide variety of options and we chose to incorporate several as well as addressing Social Studies and Language Arts standards. We chose to do a pen pal activity with the students generating questions and responses. The lessons were interactive and multi-tiered allowing for increased student engagement and collaboration. The resources required for this activity were a computer with internet access, LCD projector, various writing materials and paper, and knowledge of the Delaware content standards for Social Studies and Language Arts.
(http://www.epals.com) for several reasons. It is a reputable website that would be safe for us to use with students and it allows the user to choose the country or area they wish to correspond with. We planned to spend approximately one month e-mailing our ePals from both Haiti and Central America during which time we would teach our students about the different cultures through websites and books. We would work with students to develop appropriate questions and responses and do many activities comparing and contrasting the cultures in a variety of ways. In addition to the Social Studies and Language Arts skills we will be teaching, it will be necessary to introduce our students to basic internet safety and netiquette concepts as well. Since some of our students are not familiar with the internet, and others have had limited access simply due to their young age, it is necessary to teach these skills as well. This lesson is meant to show students that although students from other countries are different from them in some ways, in other ways they are very much the same.
*Below is the lesson plan for the Global Awareness Activity:
Reflection: I was a little concerned when we were given this assignment only because of the age level of the students I teach. When I have a hard time teaching 5 year olds that we are all from Delaware we just live in different towns, I couldn't imagine going global with them! I now think that this would be a very interesting and worthwhile lesson and very appropriate. It would take lots of scaffolding and support due to the content involved but with lots of discussion and instruction, I think that they will do very well with this activity. My partner and I decided to focus on the concepts of same and different to compare and contrast the three cultures. I think this is a concept that young children understand very well. The use of ePals made the lesson very easy to implement and is a great way to get students from various parts of the country or world to communicate and share their lives and cultures.
Description of Project:
The Global Awareness assignment required us to work with a partner or group. We were to think of a way to increase our student's global awareness or give them an experience that involved students from another country or culture. My partner and I both teach lower elementary (Kindergarten and First Grade) so we chose an activity that would be age appropriate and hopefully meaningful as well. Involving technology gave us a wide variety of options and we chose to incorporate several as well as addressing Social Studies and Language Arts standards. We chose to do a pen pal activity with the students generating questions and responses. The lessons were interactive and multi-tiered allowing for increased student engagement and collaboration. The resources required for this activity were a computer with internet access, LCD projector, various writing materials and paper, and knowledge of the Delaware content standards for Social Studies and Language Arts.
Process:
(http://www.epals.com) for several reasons. It is a reputable website that would be safe for us to use with students and it allows the user to choose the country or area they wish to correspond with. We planned to spend approximately one month e-mailing our ePals from both Haiti and Central America during which time we would teach our students about the different cultures through websites and books. We would work with students to develop appropriate questions and responses and do many activities comparing and contrasting the cultures in a variety of ways. In addition to the Social Studies and Language Arts skills we will be teaching, it will be necessary to introduce our students to basic internet safety and netiquette concepts as well. Since some of our students are not familiar with the internet, and others have had limited access simply due to their young age, it is necessary to teach these skills as well. This lesson is meant to show students that although students from other countries are different from them in some ways, in other ways they are very much the same.
*Below is the lesson plan for the Global Awareness Activity:
Reflection:
I was a little concerned when we were given this assignment only because of the age level of the students I teach. When I have a hard time teaching 5 year olds that we are all from Delaware we just live in different towns, I couldn't imagine going global with them! I now think that this would be a very interesting and worthwhile lesson and very appropriate. It would take lots of scaffolding and support due to the content involved but with lots of discussion and instruction, I think that they will do very well with this activity. My partner and I decided to focus on the concepts of same and different to compare and contrast the three cultures. I think this is a concept that young children understand very well. The use of ePals made the lesson very easy to implement and is a great way to get students from various parts of the country or world to communicate and share their lives and cultures.